Lisa Hebden

It’s been a while since I added an Africa Diary post (snippets from the dog-eared rice paper journal I shlepped around East and Southern Africa in 1997), so I will pick up where I left off:

February 27, 1997  Mark’s house, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have”
~Susan Sontag 

We’re staying here at Mum’s cousin Lani’s husband’s house outside Dar. It’s very different from the hostels we’ve been staying in. The house is very beautiful, and the dog, Ratfink, likes to jump into the pool and swim with me. We don’t quite know what to do with ourselves here. Lots of reading and exploring, I guess.

There’s a large group of people standing a ways out in the sea, all looking at something.  I want to know what they’re looking at, and what I really want to do is hurl myself in the water like Ratfink. I’ll just stay here for now.

The deck at Mark's house in Dar es Salaam. An oasis for two weary backpackers!

Feb 28

I think I’d enjoy going romantically insane, and Zanzibar would be the perfect place to do it. Though perhaps not remote enough: too many fishermen to bring me out of my passionate, wordless madness. I guess I’m just sick of small talk. It should be banned in all cultures. A ban on banality! And the word nice.

As I washed my face in the small bathroom upstairs, fabricating a letter-form speech to an ex-boyfriend, an open book on the top of the toilet caught my eye: The Fifth Penguin Book of Sunday Times Crosswords, on the back of which was written the following:

The Contemporary Rubayat

Waste not your hour, nor the in the vain pursuit
Of this and that endeavour and dispute
Better by Merry with this joyous book
Than sadden after base, or worldly, goods.
A Book of Puzzles underneath the bough,
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise now! 

~with apologies to Omar Khayyam and Edward Fitzgerald

I love how someone’s little funny can transport me from here to Pearrygin Lake in an instant, sitting on a blanket under a willow tree with a bottle of orange pop, a Daphne duMaurier novel and my sister.

We wandered around the neighbourhood, found a little shopping plaza and an art gallery full of Tinga Tinga paintings which made me really happy.

I’m feeling more nostalgic than usual tonight I guess.  This trip I took 12 years ago, over 9 countries in East and Southern Africa, shaped my visual language as well as my written. I spent rattling bus rides looking out the window trying to imagine the mixing of colours and how I would describe the shapes of the trees. 

Feb 24, 1997

Our Zanzibarian friend Joseph told me his friend had whispered to him last night, “that woman you are standing with, she took my heart away.” How lovely to find this second-hand love poetry, even the day before leaving.

Marie and H playing chess with the boys.

Feb 27, 1997

Our last day on Zanzibar has been strange, as are last days anywhere. We said goodbye to Marie after breakfast, and I felt the rising tension between us without her there. We walked around Stone Town and I got my chess set and hena. We went for red beans and rice at Passing Show and then to the Mahrubi Ruins on a dalla dalla. The pond was acid green in the light (not so much pond, but rather “circular pleasure pool” according to the sign) and there were a million fish who liked Marie’s biscuits she had unloaded on me, and strange water beetles that seem to breathe with their bums. The other pond was filled with lilies. It looked romantic  next to the old pillars that were once part the palace some guy had built for his harem. On the wall of one of the small toilet roooms in the palace was scrawled “this time tomorrow”. Hmm.

 

One of my favourite shots of the trip.

Speedo guy. This guy just drove the boat. Never said a word.

The Circular Pleasure Pool in all its glory